This blog continues my effort to chronicle my writing life, my efforts to market my work, and now my life as co-owner of a small press. I use this blog to explore the thoughts, feelings, and very nature of being an author and a publisher. I am the author of 5 detective novels, 4 action thrillers and a marketing manual. I am also the editorial director of Intrigue Publishing. I am active in local writer’s organizations and co-founded the Creatures, Crimes & Creativity conference.

Saturday, May 30, 2015

A great story with
weak characters is a big a fail, but so is wonderfully developed characters who
spout weak dialog. Like all writing, good dialog requires both craft and
conception. It’s the best way to draw readers into your story and get them
involved with the characters.The conversations
between your fictional people should reveal character and promote the plot as
well.You don’t want to waste dialog on
anything the character says that doesn’t promote these two goals.

One dialog mistake
that will scare any publisher’s editors away from your work is using dialog to
clumsily fill in your back story. You
must not have one of your characters tell another one things that person
already knows. You hear it on CSI every week – one expert explaining things
that another expert certainly knows. You can get away with this kind of thing
on television, but not in your novels or short stories. Readers know how unrealistic this is.

Here’s another scary
example of bad dialog that I made up.
I’m exemplifying here a writing technique that makes many editors
groan. It’s the result of writers trying
to make their dialog more colorful:

“I won’t put up with it,” Eve shrieked. “I’ll leave you if it happens again.”

“You can’t do that,” Adam moaned. “You’re a part of me.”

“Not anymore,” Eve snapped.

“But I love you,” Adam whined weakly.

“Then your time in paradise is over,” she chortled.

She chortled? Silly, but do you see what’s happened here. In
an effort to make the dialog more interesting, you can end up making it
laughable. There is nothing wrong with
the simple word “said” in your dialog. You might fear that it’s boring, but
actually it’s neutral. It’s almost
invisible. And because it does not draw
attention to itself, it keeps the reader’s focus on your characters’
words.

If you want variety in
your dialog, consider varying the format and adding some action or
description. Here are the exact same
quoted words, with the surrounding words rewritten:

Eve’s words exploded at him. “I won’t put up with it! I’ll leave you if it happens again.”

“you can’t do that,” Adam said.
Pain showed on his face. “You’re
a part of me.”

“Not anymore.”

“But I love you,” Adam said in a low, childlike voice.

“Then your time in paradise is over.”

There’s the same
conversation, with only one “said” and no substitute verbs. Of course those substitute verbs do carry
meaning, and maybe it’s important to you that we know that eve was laughing at
her man in that last line. If that’s
true then it’s okay to just say so.

“But I love you,” Adam said, trying to hold her eyes with his own. He withdrew in horror when Eve laughed right
in his face.

“Then your time in paradise is over.”

We’ll talk more about our
made-up conversation next week, and discuss other dialog tips.

Sunday, May 24, 2015

To conclude my series
on creating characters I want to offer some advice on how to think through the
process. To get at the essence of character I suggest that as the writer, you
must think like an actor. You, however,
get to play every part! So remember
these basics that an acting coach would tell yous:

#1 - what’s my motivation? You need to know why every character does
everything he or she does. Love is a
motivation. Greed is a motivation. Guilt
is a motivation. Fear, envy, jealousy,
ambition are all motivations. “To help move the plot along” is not a
motivation.

#2 - no one is a villain! In life, we are each the star of our little
drama. No one thinks they’re the bad
guy. Even Hitler had a very good reason
for everything he did – in HIS mind.

#3 – There are no small parts, just small actors. Make sure nobody in your story behaves as if
he’s just a walk on. Every move that
character makes is vitally important – to him.

All that having been
said, how do we then distinguish between the heroes and villains? Well, that’s the job of point of view. You will decide whose eyes the reader sees
the world through. That character is the
person your reader will most identify with.
That character then becomes sympathetic for the reader. He, or she, is now the hero, the protagonist. And whoever opposes that person’s goals and
objectives becomes de facto the villain.

Heroes and villains
need to have one thing in common – strong character. We admire people with character, and people
with character are the ones who make things happen in our world.

Let me be clear here
that character as I’m defining it is not good or bad. Character as I’m using it
here is the person’s dedication to making his actions match his beliefs. It
takes a certain strength to do what you believe is the thing to do, whether
you’re a hero or a villain.

But how can we hate
the villain and love the hero if they have so much in common? That takes us back to point of view, and what
i call the yin-yang of personality. For
example:

Heroes are determined
– villains are obsessed

Good girls are
observant – bad girls are nosey

Good guys keep you in
the loop – bad guys gossip

Heroines are leaders –
villainesses are manipulative

Good people are
thrifty – bad people are cheap

The only real societal
standard that separates your good folks from bad folk is a single motivation –
if they work to help others, no matter what else we know about them, they’re
heroes. If they work only to help
themselves, no matter what else we know about them, they’re villains.

There is a lot more to
creating good characters but this should give you a start. If any of you have
great ides, please post them in a comment to this blog.

Saturday, May 16, 2015

Last week I mentioned
the importance of character names. Superficial as we are, we draw a lot of
meaning out of names. And consider who your character is named after?Who named him, mom or dad?Does she have a name that indicates parental
personality expectations?Chastity?Felicity?And has your character grown into her name, or taken a stance in opposition
to it, like fictional adventurer Modesty Blaise?

Last names, of course,
often indicate nationality with all the assumptions they bring. If you have a fellow named Patrick O’Connor
and he isn’t Irish, you’d better tell us quickly, because we’ve already slotted
him. And in fact if he isn’t, there’s a
story there that will tell us a good deal about him.

Similarly, nicknames
tell us a lot about your character, but we need to know if he took the nick
himself or if someone stuck him with it.
If you introduce me to Tiny I expect a giant. If her pals call her
brain, she might be the one who always has a plan, or she might be an
idiot. Either way, the fact that she
accepted that nickname tells us about her confidence level and self-image.

It’s best to show
character thru actions, and not just in thrillers. Explore the character’s
hobbies, unusual talents and pet peeves.
Readers love to read about people who like the movies they like, read
the books they read, or love the same foods they love. We all have little quirks, bad habits and odd
compulsions. If your character always
salts his food, twists a lock of her hair when she’s nervous or checks his
e-mail six times a day, people will both relate to that and remember that.

Consider post war
detective Nero Wolfe spoke little and kept his feelings to himself. He wasn’t
even the point of view character. Yet he seemed like an old friend to some
readers for two reasons. His author, Rex
Stout, meticulously detailed his loving care of the orchids he cultivated, and
he showed you, in great detail, Wolfe’s gourmet eating habits AND love of a
good beer.

Wolfe exemplifies the
concept that good characters must have both common traits and some unusual
ones. Remember this: ordinary things (like wanting a beer with lunch) make a
character believable. Unique traits (like cultivating orchids in Manhattan) make
a character memorable.

Monday, May 11, 2015

Today I continue my
exploration of the elements of fiction by looking at the imaginary people we
create. Plots are important, setting is valuable, and it’s nice to have
something to say, but fiction is ultimately about the characters.

What makes for good
characters? Well, first and foremost, every character has a personality all his
or her own. The final indication of how
good a character you’ve created is simply, how fully the reader feels he knows
that personality, and how strongly the reader reacts to the character
emotionally. Speaking generally, good
characters have four important markers.

1. They are people we
recognize. You know if it’s a good
character when you say, “Hey, I know a guy just like that. You might not be personally acquainted with
any 19th century business owners, but we all know an Ebineezer Scrooge, don’t
we? Is he a stereotype? Yes… now. Are stereotypes
bad?Only if that’s as far as you take
the character.

2. They are people with
whom we can identify. They do the things you or I might do if we were ever in
their extraordinary circumstances. If you were that smart wouldn’t you solve
mysteries like Sherlock Holmes? Or have Sam Spade’s smart mouth and personal
convictions?

3. They are people we
can predict. That comes from creating
consistent characters. And that comes
from thinking your people through. How
do you get to know your characters that well?
One good exercise is to write your character into a number of different
situations, just to see what he or she will do.
If you’ve developed them well, they may surprise you. But then you’ll know how they’ll behave in
your book or story.

4. And they are people
who surprise us. That may at first seem
contradictory, but people surprise us in life all the time. One reason is that none of us lives in a
vacuum. Our relationships and our
environment shape us. My detective, Hannibal Jones, is of mixed heritage. I’ve
added depth to the character by showing my readers how differently he behaves
and speaks among his friends than he does in the mostly white business world of
Washington. His behavior may surprise you in some circumstances, yet it’s
completely consistent. As long as you can explain your character’s motivations,
it’s okay for them to occasionally surprise your readers. Consider: if the story had been told in a
different order, Scrooge’s actions on Christmas day could have been as
surprising to the reader as they were to the other characters.

Authors should know everything
about their characters. In fact, they should
know far more than they tell the reader. You should know their history, their
motives, their loves and hates, what they’re proud of and what they’re ashamed
of. That’s how they get to be
consistent.

Next week I’ll talk
about the importance of character names and appearances.

Sunday, May 3, 2015

I ended my previous blog on my approach to plotting with a
mention of the secondary plot. When I write there’s always something else going
on to distract our hero. Our hero has to save the world from nuclear
destruction, while at the same time keeping his wife from running off or keeping
his kid from using drugs or studying for that test so he can finish his degree.
This is the human drama that goes on in the shadow of the larger mission. This
makes it easier for the reader to relate to our hero because whatever it is,
the secondary plot is something they’ve had to deal with too. It helps to
complicate our hero’s life while making him a bit more human.

With all the major plot objectives in place I begin to flesh out
the outline by creating a number of events I call beats. Beats, because like
music and comedy, novels have a rhythm to them. Our hero faces a barrier,
climbs it, rests, faces another barrier, breaks thru, rests, etc. This is how
you control the pace. Moments of high tension alternate with moments of taking
a breath.

Each beat is a scene, like in a play or movie, with a definite
when and where the event takes place. They are the challenges our hero must
face to attain his goal. They must appear in a logical progression, each leading
logically to the next. They must each offer a real challenge to our hero, and
they must get harder as he goes. Each time he is less sure, or at least the
reader is less sure that he will succeed.

Remember, the central conflict runs through your whole story,
but it can’t be in every beat. Still, there should be conflict in every scene.
So in addition to the central conflict, it’s good to have a chronic conflict. This
underlying conflict can provide the opportunity for beats that don’t grow from
the central conflict, offering a rest from the big picture. Chronic or
underlying conflicts don’t necessarily have to be resolved at the end of the
story.

You’ll also want to add internal conflicts. These scenes can really
help characterization. Other beats can grow from transient conflicts. Even in
scenes that require boring background exposition, transient conflicts keep the
scenes from being boring.

So that’s it. I plan the order of the actual events that will
take place during my hero’s journey toward success. It doesn’t need to be as
obvious as The Odyssey, but that is the basic pattern. When I have enough beats
to take up about 80,000 words, I’ve got a plot and it’s time to start writing.
I start with a good strong hook that gets readers’ attention and tells them what
kind of book it is. At the end I wrap-up of all the loose ends.

About Me

I am the author of 5 detective novels in the Hannibal Jones series - Blood and Bone, Collateral Damage, The Troubleshooter, Damaged Goods and Russian Roulette, plus 4 action adventure novels, The Payback Assignment, The Orion Assignment, The Piranha Assignment and the Ice Woman Assignment. I'm active in several local writers’ organizations - a past president of the Maryland Writers Association and past vice-president of the Virginia Writers Club. By day I handle media relations for the Defense Department. For more than a decade the American Forces Network carried my radio and television news reports. I've settled in Upper Marlboro, Maryland and launched Intrigue Publishing.